Got to wondering the other night.
Some presentations of the Christmas narrative can make it sound like reconciliation was achieved by the incarnation.
‘God with us’ as a done deal, so to speak.
In that economy we respond to God’s presence and the call for kingdom living through the life and call of Jesus.
But God was with us in the garden in the beginning, and something happened that broke that initial fellowship.
Something that required God to come in a unique way so that fellowship could be restored.
It is the death and resurrection of Jesus that brings that restoration to being.
The emphasis on the incarnation needs to point forward; Jesus taking flesh was not an end in itself, it was the precious means by which our sin could be atoned.
So, rather than looking to incarnation and ceasing your gaze, look to the resurrection, for there is our salvation and also our new life.
From the liner notes of Andrew Peterson’s CD ‘Resurrection Letters Volume II’, a quote from George MacDonald:
“The world is full of resurrections. Every night that folds us up in darkness is a death; and those of you that have been out early, and have seen the first of the dawn, will know it – the day rises out of the night like a being that has burst it’s tomb and escaped into life.”
Every sleep schools us in small part with the lesson that we must awaken from the oblivious helplessness of slumber.
As the rays of dawn (or less poetically, the alarm clock) awaken us, so we heed the testimony of God’s Word and gives thanks for the Spirit, who brings the ‘awakening’ of new life and repentent faith, that we may receive the salvation achieved by the incarnate resurrected Son of God.
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